Book excerpt: The story of Bristol is the story of America, played out on the small stage of a lobster clawshaped peninsula at the heart of Narragansett Bay. From the massacre and displacement of the first Americans to the rise of the merchant class; exploration; slavery; war and peace; the Industrial Revolution; waves of immigrationall these wildly disparate facets of the American experience have been represented and reflected within these 20 square miles. Bristol has been home to patriots and pirates; ministers and murderers; captains who dominated at the helms of whalers, battleships, and 12-meter sailboats; larger-than-life industrialists; Hollywood and Broadway royalty; artists, writers, musicians, and culinary visionaries. But the bulk of the threads in Bristols remarkable tapestry are not bold-colored silk, bright metallic, or rich cashmeremost are simple and natural, unremarkably structured and hued, but each one quietly doing its part to form the strong, tightly-woven foundation of this very special place.